New York, NY (October 27, 2023)—Following a 50-year gap in manufacture, the Eventide Clockworks Omnipressor is back in production.
In 1973, Eventide Clockworks introduced the Omnipressor, the first studio product to encourage the use of dynamics for special effects. It joined the Instant Phaser in studios worldwide, with the Instant Flanger following shortly after. All were used on countless recordings and are now considered truly classic products.
Unlike the Phaser and Flanger, the Omnipressor, with its still-unique dynamic reversal, infinite compression, variable gating and separate “side chain,” was discontinued a few years later. It had become difficult to obtain some exclusive parts and even more difficult to explain it to an industry that was much less sophisticated than it is today.
The original Omnipressor was born from an idea that Eventide’s founder, Richard Factor, got while talking to Mark Weiss, one of the scientists investigating the “18-minute gap” of the Nixon Watergate scandal. The side-chain idea that resulted enabled feats of compression that was impossible (and unstable) with the compression architecture of the previous era, but doable with the emerging, more modern hardware of the 1970s.
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The earlier “white face” (Model 2826) Omnipressor was not only hard to explain, but also hard to use, and it yielded shortly to the “black face” (Model 2830) unit designed by Jon Paul, another ex-colleague of Mark Weiss. This version, after selling a few hundred units, was also discontinued.
Years later, Factor developed a hardware emulation using VSIG for the Eventide Orville, and Eventide’s development team subsequently created an Omnipressor plug-in for Pro Tools. Fatefully, in an episode of the Gear Club podcast, Factor impulsively suggested that Eventide would reintroduce the rackmount classic—which is now available as the golden-anniversary Omnipressor Model 2830*Au.
The new model is a faithful replica designed from original hand-drawn schematics in the Eventide archives with the same circuitry and the same sound as the original 2830. The new *Au model features the ability to link multiple units and is fitted with input and output audio transformers, which were a costly option on the original. Other improvements include a universal power supply and a backlit meter. More convenient TRS/XLR connectors replace the original terminal strip.
The MSRP for the Omnipressor Model 2830*Au is $1,999. It will ship in January 2024. Pre-orders are available now.
